How to organize your drawers

We would love to have neat, organized drawers, if only we knew where to begin. And now we do, thanks to Linda Koopersmith, The Beverly Hills Organizer, whose folding and storing techniques will have your drawers organized in no time.

Now I know all the shelves and drawers in your house are probably a mess. But the secret to well-organized shelves and drawers starts with the fold. So I’m going to show you how to fold a t-shirt.

A simple t-shirt is pretty easy to fold if you know how to do it the right way. My goal is to make sure that all the t-shirts are the same width in the drawer. And it starts with the actual neckline. As you can see right here, there’s a little line here, and a little line here, and this is where we want to fold to. So let’s turn, take the t-shirt and fold it over, making a nice, straight edge coming down. And I also like to just smooth it out; it almost gives it just a little bit of an ironing touch. Then the cap sleeve I’m going to turn back. I’m going to do the same thing to the other side, folding it over right to the edge of that neckline, and smoothing out the t-shirt, and folding this sleeve back. Then the other thing I want to do, is I want to fold to the depth of my drawers.

So the next step is to take the t-shirt and fold it in half, making the neckline and the bottom of the shirt level, smoothing it again, and then, depending on the depth of the drawer, I’ll go ahead and fold it in half one more time. Now did you know that a t-shirt, by itself, will stand up? So can you imagine, when your drawers are filled, and all your shirts are the same width and color coordinated, how beautiful that’ll be?

Let’s fold a thong. Some people get very confused with thongs, and they kind of wad them up and throw them in the drawer. But they’re really not that difficult to fold. First thing you want to do is face it butt-up, like so. Then, depending on the length of the sides, you may want to turn it in once, and then twice, creating an X pattern. If the thong is very small, it’ll only require one fold over. But in this case, we’re going to fold this side also, once, then twice. Again, creating that X pattern. Then, depending on the length of the crotch, we are going to, in this case, fold it in thirds. It can either be folded in half, but as I said in this case, we’ll fold it in thirds, up one turn, then another fold up, giving you a great little package like this.

Swim suits can be a real problem as well. You’re going to put this particular bottom, bottom-down on the table. Once you do that, the whole purpose is to fold it the width of the crotch area. How we do that, is by simply taking one side and folding it over into a third. If some of the bottoms are way too wide, we’ll take an extra little turn when we’re folding it over, like so. Fold, and then another fold, giving you a rectangular shape like this. Then from the crotch we will fold it into thirds, up one third, and then yet another one, giving you a great little package like this for the bottoms.

Now let's set that aside, and we’re ready to do the top. With any type of a top, be it a bikini top or a bra or whatnot, we want to hide the spaghetti straps. Anything that’s out, we want to fold in, creating a rectangular, rectangular shape or square. So I’m going to take the top and fold the straps under like so. Then I’m going to fold it into thirds. Fold it over one-third this way, another third this way, and then I’m going to fold it up thirds from the bottom; one, two. Again, creating a nice little package. Now lets take the bottoms and put it together, and we’ve got a great set.

All right. We’re ready to put the things away in organized drawers – but I have a couple of secrets for you. The secrets that I use to keep the drawers very organized; it starts with a drawer-divider like this one. It’s spring loaded, so it adjusts to the depth of your drawer, or should I say length of your drawer, however you look at it. And we’re going to go ahead, and stick it inside the drawer like so.

Now we’re ready to put things inside. Everything is color coordinated and organized – and also, notice how everything is the same width, because we folded everything right to the edge of the neckline. Let me go ahead and insert that one in here, and look at our beautiful row of t-shirts. And for the smaller tops, simply slide your drawer divider over, and insert in the drawer like so.

Now, for the little things that I folded, like the thong and the swimsuit, I have another secret for you; it’s a socks box. This is how I keep all the little items contained in the drawer. What I do is I go ahead and color coordinate thongs as I’m putting them in like so, and it actually also fits a bathing suit. So let’s slip the bathing suit in as well, and we’re ready to put it in a drawer.

Take a look at that. Voila! You’re good to go. I’m Linda Koopersmith, the Beverly Hills Organizer, for howdini.com.

meet theexpert

Linda Koopersmith Home Organizer
Linda Koopersmith, the Beverly Hills Organizer, has helped thousands of clients organize their homes and offices. She co-hosted Clean House on the Style Network for three years. more about this expert »